A few months back I scooped up a sweet domain name, vJot.com, but had no particular reason for doing so. I couldn’t have that, my parents raised me better. So, I built a tasty, little app during RailsConf to fill the void and boy was I happy. I mentioned its arrival on Twitter and managed to get eight people using it concurrently. Hot damn, I’m retiring to the Bahamas!
Then, some folks claimed it was buggy, and others mentioned it wasn’t much to look at (you guys know who you are, my feelings were hurt), but I think I’ve appeased the masses after a month of tweaking. The latter was fixed because I stole the style from a project Chris is working on (more on that soon).
It’s a simple note-taking app inspired by a sweet OS X jotter called Notational Velocity. There’s nothing in particular in the code worth showing off, but anything I’m writing for personal satisfaction is going to be MIT’d. Too long I worried if my previous employer owned my code (and soul, but that’s a different post).
Demo: http://vjot.com
Browse: http://require.errtheblog.com/projects/browser/vjot
Checkout: svn co svn://errtheblog.com/svn/projects/vjot
There’s a handful of stuff I still want to do like adding a concurrent edit warning, converting to javascript-lookups instead of db-lookups, and hooking up global shortcut keys, but sometimes you just gotta launch a bitch.
If you don’t “get” the app, that’s okay, I don’t expect everyone to find a need for it. Chris and I have had success using it to keep track of our ideas and plans for upcoming posts/events since its inception. And if we’re using it, well…
I’ve even been using it to keep track of feature requests for itself, it doesn’t get much more meta than that folks. Happy jottin’.
I’m not sure I’m gonna end up using it often but it’s a cool tiny app :)
Thanks for making it MIT, it’s always cool to be able to see the code of other people.
Your marketing guys missed a “features” bullet point.
Takes notesNice to look atHop to it!
If you want to make it truly concurrent and real-time, you might be interested in Juggernaut: http://juggernaut.rubyforge.org
No UTF-8 support at this time. What about 5 billions of non-english people? :)
The SVN URL should be svn://errtheblog.com/svn/projects/vjot (note the added /svn/).
err, you are so funny! keep up the good work!
I think this would be a fun app to use with Google Gears. Any takers?
Dear PJ,
Thank you for publishing this. I am a huge proponent of the approach you’ve taken here (and I mean that in more than one sense). In particular, I like the division of labor approach and in general anything that breaks down the monolithic applications into manageable chunks or modules.
Would you mind if I offer some criticism here? I’d like to comment on your product in a constructive way, if I may. But, in order to really do that, I need to ‘break some eggs’:) I hope you won’t take my comments personally, because it is not my intention to criticize you, only to point out some issues with the product that seem glaring to me.
First, I like the idea of having a low barrier to entry, low tech utility (or, a servant if you will), that will always be there for me when I want to jot something down (well, not really always, but I tend to avoid airports and airplanes like plague!)
But man, you’ve created a usability disaster! Let me explain the exasperation I went through when using your site:
OK, I went to the vjot.com to try it out. From the name you’ve given it, I made an assumption that it is a utility that will allow me to accomplish some virtual jotting down of my fleeting thoughts. First impression—great. Like the colors and the layout, simple enough, great job.
But immediately, I wasn’t sure what’s the purpose and the meaning of the three progressively larger white boxes. My gut assumption was that the top box is the input box where I could type something in—yes, I was right about that.
What was my gut expectation on what will happen when I hit the enter key? I’ve expected the content to be posted somewhere, perhaps in one of the two boxes below. Intuitively, I was expecting the content to show up in the middle box, the one immediately below the input box. I was right.
But then, what is the purpose and the meaning of the bottom input box? It didn’t make any sense to me then, and it still doesn’t make any sense to me now, after I’ve played with the site for a while.
Following that, I’ve started experiencing what I can only term a very maddening trip. Things would appear and disappear on the page, depending on where I’d click. Nothing seemed to have rhyme or reason when it comes to how is the page responding to my actions. Later in the game I’ve discovered (actually, more like stumbled upon by a fluke) that the topmost input box is also an Ajaxified search box. What the?
Also, I could never figure out the meaning of the ‘clear’ link. I hit ‘clear’ and instead of clearing the display area, it loads it with all the jots I’ve entered thus far. What the? How’s that intuitive?
You really need to go back to the drawing board and run through several interaction design sessions before continuing to charge down this maddening path. Keep in mind the human user, his/her goals, and the principle of the least astonishment. Also, the “don’t make me think” principle is really big and really valid on the web, so allow that one to inform your decisions when designing this utility.
I hope this helps. Like I’ve said, absolutely didn’t intend to hurt your feelings, only wanted to see if I could help make this a really enjoyable and popular product.
Cheers!
An RSS feed would be handy
I’ve been singing the praises of Notational Velocity to anyone and everyone. Is [this]http://notational.net/nvimages/look.jpg not genius?
Nice to see a web version.
(Obviously I can’t read the Textile instructions properly – I’m a Markdown man.)
No more CNet? Wha’ happened?
Chime in.